In the modern world, with the increase of hustle and bustle and travel, there is a demand for reducing the time and labor involved in laundering and/or fabric care chores. That is, consumers desire a product that delivers not only excellence in cleaning, but also superior fabric care or garment care benefits, such as superior garment appearance; excellent tactile characteristics, such as fabric feel; fabric softness; reduction, removal or prevention of creases or wrinkles in garments; superior ease of ironing; garment shape retention and/or shape recovery; and fabric elasticity.
The use of organosilicones to reduce wrinkles and/or soften the fabrics has been known for some time. More recently, organosilicone in the form of aqueous emulsions have been employed in laundry and/or fabric care compositions. More specifically, organosilicone microemulsions with average particles sizes in the range of about 0.1 microns or less are believed to be more advantageous over conventional macroemulsions in at least the following aspects: (1) the microemulsions are more stable; (2) the microemulsions require less energy to make and (3) the microemulsions are translucent and/or transparent, thus, when incorporated into a liquid formulation, the resulting product has more pleasing, clear appearance. Organosilicone microemulsions in laundry or fabric care applications have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,173,201; 5,532,023; 6,491,840 and references cited therein. These microemulsions are produced by the conventional process of emulsifying an organosilicone in water with surfactants. However, a large amount of surfactant is required to prepare these microemulsions. A typical concentration of silicone in a microemulsion is 10-30%. The use of a high level of surfactant increases the cost of the microemulsion. Alternatively, a low concentration of silicone in the microemulsion adds to the cost of transportation, storage, etc.
In spite of the advances in the art, there remains a need for improved fabric care using organosilicones. In one aspect, it is desirable to improve the deposition of organosilicones onto the fabrics during the aqueous laundering/cleaning process; that is, the conflict between the cleaning operation which removes substances from the fabrics and the fabric care operation which requires deposition of care actives (such as organosilicones) onto the fabrics needs to be resolved. In another aspect, it is desirable to have a process wherein silicone fluids are incorporated directly into liquid laundry compositions and form microemulsions in situ in the liquid laundry composition. This improved process would avoid using unnecessarily large amount of surfactant in the production of the microemulsion and the cost of storage and transportation. In another aspect, it is desirable to have a laundry detergent composition which combines laundry adjuncts and selected organosilicones in such a way as to achieve superior fabric cleaning and fabric care at the same time. It is further desirable that such laundry detergent exhibits formulation stability and/or a clear, or translucent appearance, all of which contribute to an aesthetically pleasing product.